Arrests, Searches, Interrogations, Dec 1976 (43.7)

<< No. 43 : 31 December 1976 >>

ELEVEN ITEMS

[1]

The Release of MART NIKLUS, 3 December 1976

The report in CCE 42.3 on the arrest of Mart Niklus in Tartu contained a few inaccuracies. A corrected and expanded report is given below.

On 30 September 1976 police investigator Vavrenyuk turned up at the school where Mart Niklus teaches English and handed him a search warrant (at this point CCE 42.3 made its most notable error). The reason given for the search was the theft of a typewriter and a calculating machine. Vavrenyuk demanded that Niklus should accompany her and attend the search.

When they left the school Niklus refused to get into the police car and declared he was going to the procurator’s office. Vavrenyuk tried to stop him but he broke away from her. About 200-300 metres away a number of men acting on Vavrenyuk’s orders seized Niklus by the arms and legs and pushed him into the car. At this, Niklus resisted and shouted. When the car drove up to his house he refused to get out and demanded to be taken to the procurator’s office. Instead, he was taken to a police station. There he was subjected to a body search. Then Vavrenyuk went off to carry out the search but Niklus was kept at the police station for three hours. Of course, no ‘stolen’ typewriters were found during the search. However, the following were confiscated: an appeal from a group of former political prisoners from the Baltic states, Solzhenitsyn’s works, notebooks, and the text of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar.

On 8 October Niklus was arrested; he was taken straight from his lessons to prison. A criminal case was made out against him under Article 182 of the Estonian SSR Criminal Code (‘Resisting a representative of authority’). According to the official version, Niklus hit Vavrenyuk. In protest at his arrest Niklus tore up his passport, renounced his Soviet citizenship and declared himself on hunger-strike.

On 12 October Niklus was transferred from Tartu to Tallinn. On 20 October they began to feed him forcibly.

On 3 December, after 56 days of uninterrupted hunger-strike, Niklus was released. The same day the case was dropped in accord with Article 5, para. 4 of the Estonian SSR Code of Criminal Procedure (‘Pardon’).

On 6 December Niklus was told by the Tartu procurator’s office that the things confiscated from him during the search would be returned to him, but by 18 December this had still not been done.

On 15 December Niklus was asked to hand in to the police the documents required to obtain a passport.

[2]

GRIDASOV

MAGADAN. CCE 40.15 [7] reported threats made by the KGB against the worker Viktor Gridasov, who is trying to renounce Soviet citizenship. The report ended thus:

‘Gridasov was warned that his contacts with foreigners were regarded as criminal acts and that if he continued the contacts he would be ‘put in a psychiatric hospital’ or subjected to ‘more effective measures’.

When Gridasov asked what was meant by ‘more effective measures’, he received no answer.

On 26 November Viktor Gridasov was arrested. He was charged with ‘infringing the residence regulations’. On being arrested he declared a hunger-strike.

A friend of Gridasov’s, the worker Gennady Bogolyubov, finds himself in a threatened position because he (like Gridasov) is accused of having an interest in the works of A. I. Solzhenitsyn.

After a search on 11 November 1975 (CCE 40.15 [6]) Bogolyubov was charged according to Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code). He was made to sign a promise not to leave town and was interrogated many times at KGB headquarters.

On 9 October 1976 there was a fresh search, this time ‘on suspicion of harbouring narcotics’. The search yielded no results, but Bogolyubov was nevertheless kept in the police cells for five days. His cell-made tried in various ways, also threatening him, to get him to admit he had been harbouring narcotics.

On 14 October Bogolyubov was released, but without his passport. (As far as is known, his passport has still not been returned to him.)

Bogolyubov came to the attention of the KG B in 1973, after he began a correspondence with Vladimir Osipov, editor of the journal Veche. A search was then carried out at his home ‘on suspicion of the harbouring of firearms’. The day after the search Bogolyubov was beaten up by persons unknown to him on the street; the police and the procurator’s office then refused to investigate the attack (Veche, No. 9). In recent years Bogolyubov has been summoned to KGB headquarters a number of times to be handed letters mailed to him by his friends.

A case under Article 190-1 has already been brought against Bogolyubov once. He then spent some months in a psychiatric hospital.

[3]

In July 1976, the home of Grigory Lifshits, a student at the Moscow Cultural Institute, was searched in connection with the case of E. Paltsev (CCE 41.5 [3]). Photocopies of books by Solzhenitsyn and the journal Kontinent were confiscated. After being interrogated a number of times, Lifshits signed a ‘Warning’ according to the Decree of 25 December 1972. The interrogations were conducted by KGB investigators Sorokin and Titov.

At the end of November Titov also interrogated the engineer Alexander Ivanchenko, who refused to sign a ‘Warning’.

[4]

At the beginning of December, the geologist Vladimir Skvirsky, a colleague of Ivanchenko’s, was interrogated. He was shown scores of ‘Declarations’ written by his acquaintances and describing Skvirsky’s way of life, among other things, Skvirsky refused to sign a ‘Warning’ — ‘out of moral considerations’, as he stated.

[5]

RUBTSOV

On 30 November Alexander Fyodorovich RUBTSOV’s home in the settlement of Kupavna near Moscow was searched ‘with the aim of discovering and confiscating arms and ammunition’. Not finding these in Alexander Rubtsov’s room, the searchers continued the search — in spite of his protests — in the room of his brother Vladimir Rubtsov, who was at work at the time.

The searchers (one of them was Senior Lieutenant Sinev, police inspector of the town of Zheleznodorozhny) confiscated a number of documents in Vladimir’s room: texts of public speeches by A, D. Sakharov, articles by Solzhenitsyn, Nelidov, Tcicgin, Pimenov, Voinovich, Izgoycv and Zamyatin, three issues of the Chronicle and a story by Orwell. The official record listed 42 titles.

On 2 December Alexander Rubtsov was summoned for a talk by KGB Major Leontev, who was interested in his brother’s circle of friends. Rubtsov protested against the illegal search (the warrant was not signed by the Procurator) and said that the confiscated papers did not belong to him. Major Leontev expressed the opinion that Alexander’s brother Vladimir was on the way to committing a crime.

On 7 December V. Rubtsov’s wife, the geologist Tatyana Postnikova, was visited at work by a KGB official. He was interested in her husband’s friends and advised her to use her influence on him. According to the KGB official, V. Rubtsov was guilty of disseminating the Gulag Archipelago and of producing parts for a duplicating apparatus, and this could be confirmed by witnesses. Rubtsov was also accused of taking part in a demonstration on Pushkin Square on 5 December 1976 (see above in this issue). The KGB official expressed his intention of meeting T. Postnikova again and of visiting Vladimir Rubtsov, know,’ he also said, ‘that Rubtsov and Yankelevich intend to write a protest. I don’t advise them to do so; it has not been of any use to anyone yet and can only make their situation worse.’

On the same day, the third Rubtsov brother and his wife were interrogated. On 16 (or 17) December Tatyana Postnikova was summoned for a talk again, but she refused to talk, saying that she had stated all she could during the first talk.

On 20 December, the KGB official tried at last to talk to Vladimir Rubtsov himself, but the latter refused to answer most of his questions, explaining his refusal by the fact that the formal status of the talk did not oblige him to do anything. V. Rubtsov stated only that the material confiscated from him had been given to him by someone who had emigrated from the USSR.

[6]

YANKELEVICH

On 27 December Efrem Yankelevich appealed in a declaration to the International League for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the German Society for Human Rights, and the AFL-CIO:

‘At the end of November an illegal search was carried out at the home of my friend Vladimir Rubtsov… In defending Vladimir Rubtsov and counting on your support in this, I am also defending my own right to free exchange of information … I shall risk also expressing a more general assertion: depriving anyone of the right freely to exchange information means limiting the rights of everyone in this regard …

‘Therefore, I have always regarded it as my right, and I still do, to read and distribute any manuscripts or printed material, approved or not approved by the authorities. While access to uncensored publications remains difficult for the majority of my fellow-citizens, I also consider it my duty to distribute them. I consider unjustifiable and illegal any attempt by the government^ direct or indirect, to limit this right of mine, or the right of my friends, or of anyone else…

‘I hope that your organization will come to the defence of Vladimir Rubtsov and will also support the position here expressed, if it should prove acceptable.’

[7]

GASTEV

On 20 October Senior Investigator Tikhonov of the Moscow Procurator’s Office carried out a search at the flat of Yury A. Gastev (two other persons, not named in the warrant, also took part in the search). The search lasted from 10 am to 1 pm and took place in Gastev’s absence: his two daughters with their small children and his mother-in-law were at home. When he happened to ring up home to say that he would soon be back, the searchers hurried to be away before he arrived, Neither the warrant nor the search record made any mention of the nature of the case with which the search was linked, or of the case number.

Tikhonov stated only that it was to do with some case ‘concerning dissemination of knowingly false and libellous fabrications defaming the Soviet political and social system’ (a formulation found in Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code). The following were confiscated: a typewriter, personal papers, rough drafts of Gastev’s memoirs entitled The Fate of the ‘Poor Hedonists’, a foreword to the anthology Pamyat [Memory], in which these memoirs were published (CCE 42.12 [2]), a few samizdat and foreign publications (Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, Berdyaev, Amalrik, Chronicle 38, Russian newspapers and journals published in the West, American newspapers and journals, and so on).

Yu, A. Gastev was subjected to searches and interrogations in 1974, as part of the case against the journal Veche (CCE 32.16, CCE 34.7 [11]). After letters in his defence from Soviet, American and Canadian academics, addressed to the administrative authorities at the Power Stations Construction Centre where he worked, the authorities called him in for a talk, which ended in them wishing him ‘further success in your work’; but in December 1975, after the group with whom Gastev had worked was liquidated, he was forced to leave his job, under threat of inevitable dismissal. On 16 January 1976, the board of the Editorial Publishing Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences issued a statement concerning the ‘grave errors’ committed by the Nauka publishing house, which in 1975 published Gastev’s book Homomorphism and its Patterns, as this contained ‘serious defects’. This was a reference to the way in which he had quoted from and thanked a number of academics who had either emigrated from the USSR or been subjected to persecution, as well as his symbolic expression of thanks to Dr. Chain and Dr. Stokes (to older readers, these thanks recalled the memory of the morning of 5 March 1953, when the regular bulletin on J. V. Stalin’s health reported the onset of the Chain-Stokes type of respiration).

Yury Alexeyevich GASTEV is a Cand.Sc. (Philosophy) who works in the field of mathematical logic and epistemology. Like the other members of his father’s family — his father was the revolutionary, poet and scientist A. K. Gastev, who was shot in 1937 — Yu. Gastev served a term in Stalin’s camps.

[8]

SIMIS & KAMINSKAYA

On 16 November, at one of the Moscow stations, the married couple K. M. Simis and D. I. Kaminskaya were detained on their way back from their country house (dacha).

Officials of the Moscow Procurator’s Office (investigator Tikhonov) carried out a search at their city flat and also at their country house. A few hours later Yuly Daniel and his wife I. Uvarova (neighbours of Simis and Kaminskaya at their country house) were detained at the same station, taken to the city procurator’s office and shown warrants for subjecting them to a body search.

During the ‘house’ searches a number of foreign editions of books were confiscated (including Tsvetayeva, Mandelstam, Pasternak and Akhmatova), as well as personal papers, photographs, telephone books, notebooks, typewriters and cameras. A typed manuscript and some notebooks were confiscated from Daniel’s bag. The same day all four were interrogated.

A few days later Simis and Kaminskaya [¹] were again summoned for interrogation.

Investigator Tikhonov was mainly interested in who was the author of the typewritten text (part of which had been confiscated from Daniel and another part from Simis). K. M. Simis asserted that he himself was the author of the manuscript and this was confirmed by D. I. Kaminskaya: at later interrogations they refused to answer. At the end of Kaminskaya’s interrogation she was presented with a piece of paper stating that she was suspected of being the author (evidently a crude procedural error had taken place, as she was being interrogated as a witness and a witness is treated quite differently during an interrogation from a person under suspicion, Chronicle).

On 15 December Simis was again summoned for interrogation — he was mainly questioned about this manuscript. Simis refused to discuss its contents with the investigator. Judging by the investigator’s questions, the case is tending towards a charge under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code).

The manuscript in question has never circulated in samizdat. It is known to be a work analysing the social problems of Soviet society.

K. M. Simis is an international jurist and a research officer at the Institute of State and Law.

D. I. Kaminskaya is one of the leading defence lawyers of Moscow; at various times (1967-1970) she has defended Yu. Galanskov, V. Bukovsky, A. Marchenko, P. Litvinov and I. Gabai. After the trial of Gabai and Dzhemilev she was deprived of the right to participate in ‘political’ trials — in particular, she was not allowed to defend S. Kovalyov and A. Tverdokhlebov (CCE 37.4).

On 2 December, the Helsinki Group issued a statement on what had occurred and called on international organizations of jurists to speak out in defence of K. Simis and D. Kaminskaya.

[9]

On 18 December Larisa Bogoraz left Moscow to join her husband Anatoly Marchenko, who is serving his exile in Chuna, Irkutsk Region. In the train she was searched — on suspicion of stealing documents and money from one of the passengers. It is known that Lev Kopelev’s book To be Preserved for Ever was confiscated from her.

[10]

UKRAINIAN HELSINKI GROUP

On 24 December, on the authority of a warrant issued by the deputy procurator of Moscow, Nesterov, searches were carried out at the homes of members of the Ukrainian Group to Assist the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements — at the home of the group’s leader Nikolai Rudenko (in Kiev) and at those of group members Oles Berdnik (Kiev), Ivan Kandyba (Lvov Region), Lev Lukyanenko (Chernigov) and Alexei Tikhy (Donetsk Region).

During the searches materials belonging to the group, personal papers and notebooks were confiscated. In addition, 40 dollars were confiscated from N. Rudenko, some pornographic postcards from O. Berdnik and an old German rifle from A. Tikhy. In protest Raisa Rudenko (N. Rudenko’s wife) and group members Oles Berdnik, Nikolai Matusevich and Miroslav Marinovich went on hunger-strike.

On 28 December, the Moscow Helsinki Group issued a statement about these searches. The statement expresses their conviction that the ‘compromising materials’ were brought by the searchers.

[11]

The Psychiatric Arrest of Vladimir Borisov

As CCE 42.3 [2] reported, a search was carried out on 13 September at the home of Vladimir Borisov in Leningrad. During the search, a printing mechanism constructed by Borisov was discovered. On 21 September Borisov announced at a press conference that he had made this mechanism to ‘promote the free exchange and distribution of information’.

On 25 December, the police seized Borisov on the street in Leningrad and took him to the Skvortsov-Stepanov psychiatric hospital number 3. The hospital informed Elena Pavlovna Borisova that her son was in good condition and that he was in the ‘violent section’. Borisov’s doctors gave his relatives contradictory information about the reasons for his forcible hospitalization: according to Arnold //ilieh Tobak, head of section 8, it had been done on the orders of the city psychiatrist on duty; according to Mikhail Pavlovich Isakov, head doctor at the hospital, it had been at the request of a clinic, as Borisov had been refusing to keep an appointment there for a long time. The doctors at the hospital initiated conversations with both Borisov and his wife Irina Kaplun about emigration from the USSR. The head doctor Isakov expressed the opinion that no obstacles would be put in the way of their emigration.

On 26 December two statements were issued: ‘To those whose Consciences are not Asleep!’ (with 25 signatures) and ‘To the International League for Human Rights, the Initiating Committee against Abuses of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, and the International Association of Psychoanalysts’ (with 26 signatures).

The first statement said:

‘On 25 December 1976, on one of the streets of Leningrad, a man close and dear to us was detained by the police and taken to psychiatric hospital number 3. This was Vladimir Borisov, who has already been imprisoned twice in a special psychiatric hospital and spent nine years altogether there. All this was just because he defended the right to receive and distribute information, the right to have one’s own opinion and to express it openly…

‘In answer to this clearly unlawful action, we intend to do all we can to expose the illegal actions of the authorities in using psychiatry to suppress dissent…

‘Freedom for all prisoners of conscience receiving ‘psychiatric treatment’! Immediate freedom for Vladimir Borisov!’

On the same day Irina Kaplun issued a statement for the press:

‘The only ‘reason’ the doctor could give to justify this forcible hospitalization was the papers confiscated during a search by the police.

‘Three years have not yet gone by since the day when a court found Borisov to be mentally healthy and released him from a prison psychiatric hospital after four years of imprisonment. And now, once more… I do not know what the authorities intend to do in future, but my husband could end up in a special psychiatric hospital again — for the third time in his 33 years of life, or he could be put in a prison or a concentration camp. The real reason for this is that he has always defended people’s right to meet freely and exchange information and ideas.’

The head doctor of the hospital asked Irina Kaplun which psychiatrists she would like to see on the commission that would carry out a diagnosis. Kaplun suggested three psychiatrists: Semyon Gluzman [²], Marina Voikhanskaya (CCE 36.10 [13]) and the English psychiatrist Gery Low-Beer (CCE 35.1).

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